August 6, 2006
WWII ENDED THE NAZI PARTY, THE CIVIL WAR DIDN'T END THE DEMOCRATIC:
Hezbollah has risen to fill a social need: Israel must truly understand the Lebanese political movement to achieve a lasting peace (Fawaz A. Gerges, August 6, 2006, Newsday)
There is a misunderstanding in Israel and the United States that Israel can militarily rid Lebanon of Hezbollah, or the Party of God.In the first place, Hezbollah is not just a militia or a conventional army, but a social and political movement deeply rooted in its society, with a big constituency within the Lebanese Shia community that comprises about 40 percent of the country's 4 million people. Hezbollah has a welfare system that provides schools, clinics, day-care centers and jobs to hundreds of thousands of poor Shia. Hezbollah provides the Shia community, historically disadvantaged and marginalized in Lebanon, with a sense of identity and pride.
Second, Hezbollah is falsely portrayed as a rotten tooth that can easily be plucked out - a terrorist organization that must be wiped out. In fact, it is one of the most pivotal political players on the Lebanese landscape. More than a million men and women vote for its candidates in elections. It has two ministers in the Cabinet, 14 seats in Lebanon's 128-seat parliament and a large base of support in Lebanon and the Muslim world. [...]
It is naive for President George W. Bush to view Lebanon as just another front in the war on terror. The root causes of the Israeli-Hezbollah confrontation lie in the unresolved Arab-Israeli conflict and stalled peace process. And it is unrealistic for Israel to think that it can destroy Hezbollah for good.
Mr. Gerges is wrong though about the roadmap to peace--the US and Israel should back statehood for the Shi'a of Lebanon. Posted by Orrin Judd at August 6, 2006 3:40 PM
The root cause is Islam.It's adherents can't live with it or without it. Very sad.
Posted by: Tom C.,Stamford,Ct. at August 6, 2006 4:01 PMNor can we without Christianity. Look at Europe.
Posted by: oj at August 6, 2006 4:06 PM. . . to be followed by the mass murder of Lebanese Christians.
Posted by: obc at August 6, 2006 4:42 PMThey have much to answer for and Northern Lebanon, but nothing in Shi'a history suggests massacres would be on the agenda.
Posted by: oj at August 6, 2006 4:45 PMMaybe they'll just settle for expulsion and misery, like the Christians of Bethlehem. Not so long ago, they were the majority in that city. Now a small minority of the population is still Christian.
Posted by: obc at August 6, 2006 5:04 PMBreed or pass.
Posted by: oj at August 6, 2006 5:10 PMUntil the Mullahs start preaching peace and tolerance from their pulpits there will be no peace anywhere Islam is practiced. The likelihood of that is miniscule. The so called Arab-Israeli peace process is a sham and always has been. Just another tactic used by the Islamists. Hezbullah, some kind of social movement that brings bombs falling on its own constituents.
Posted by: morry at August 6, 2006 5:16 PMWhy would the powerless accept peace as a virtue?
Posted by: oj at August 6, 2006 5:23 PMAbsolutely not.
The poor, foolish muslims have been deluded by Western peace-creep rhetoric into imagining, as Churchill marvelled concerning the unreformed Shintoists, that they will not be ground to powder.
On the "Shia/Sunni" business, I am still waiting for a book, good article, essay, comment, anything that sets forth how the dispute over which branch of the RICO gets to control the whole mob has any significance beyond the advantage their confusion affords our side.
I keep reading the books--nothing; books by muslims--nothing. Articles, posts and comments--nothing. Still waiting. I feel like Artie Johnson in his German uniform, going up to Bob Hope and saying, "Effry Chrristmas, I vated unt vated, unt you neffer came!"
God help us if every alienated group gets its own armed nation-state.
But I do agree that the Shia have been shat upon. Like everyone, even al-Sadr's boyz, they deserve better.
Posted by: ghostcat at August 6, 2006 6:24 PM"The root causes of the Israeli-Hezbollah confrontation lie in the unresolved Arab-Israeli conflict and stalled peace process." The only way to "resolve" the conflict and bring "peace" is to finish what Hitler has started. Even if every one in Euro Land and Arab Land wanted to wipe Israel off the map, the Great Satan would not allow that. Like it or not, it is in the Great Satan's DNA to protect the Little Satan.
Posted by: ic at August 6, 2006 7:10 PM. . . and that's why America is the greatest nation to come forth on this planet.
Posted by: obc at August 6, 2006 7:33 PMLou:
No one will control all and both are pretty good about setting up viable democracies. The current dust up is just over pushing a few Arab states to that point.
Posted by: oj at August 6, 2006 7:38 PMThe Civil War didn't end the Democratic Party?
Better late than never...
Posted by: Joseph Hertzlinger at August 6, 2006 10:57 PMA Palestinian state didn't bring peace, why should a Shi'a state? Peace in the Middle East to all Moslem sects means all the Jews are dead and Israel no longer appears on any world map, not only, as it does now, on those maps that pander to Islam.
Posted by: erp at August 7, 2006 9:16 AMIt's not quite a state yet, but it has brought peace.
Posted by: oj at August 7, 2006 10:31 AM